Silence muffles family stories when those who knew what happened are gone. Frenkel’s investigative quest into her parents’ WWII stories of survival. She uses digital and real-world archives to solve family mysteries thereby honoring her parents and lost relatives and ensuring that memories of their culture endure. The plights of Holocaust survivors and refugees remain relevant and she encourages empathy for today’s displaced 100 million.
How do you do genealogical research. Treasures guides you though five steps: 1. Oral History: talk to people you know 2. Google Anything: have fun 3. Sleuthing Archives: get serious 4. Value of the Visit: travel to the places 5. Family Tree: see how the puzzle fits together
Between assignments as a technology journalist, I googled my parents’ names. What was I hoping to find? Both were Polish Jews--one a refugee who arrived in the U.S. in 1939 and the other survived the Holocaust as a slave laborer. So much had already been written about the Holocaust. But I had inherited from my mother an oral history and a massive collection of photographs, letters and artwork from her family’s prosperous Jewish life in Poland before WWII. These treasures inspired me to embark on the family history quest detailed in this five-part doc series. I’m also writing a memoir that fills in many details we had to leave out.
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